Tuesday, 3:00 p.m.
Marjorie Saiser is like Connie Wanek: why have I not known her lovely work before this? Saiser is the author of two books of poems, Bones of a Very Fine Hand and Lost in Seward County. She co-edited the anthology of poetry and prose by women of the Great Plains, Times of Sorrow, Times of Grace. And she is co-editor of a book of interviews with writers, Road Trip. I have spent some time talking with her: in addition to being a fine writer, she is a lovely person.
"Thank you, Marshall Festival," she said.
"Wonderful, such fun, standing things on their head," she said.
"So much language, so many words washing over...."
"That's my kind of people, who said 'None of your bee's wax.'"
"So Loren started to talk because that is what you did if you liked someone and everything was okay...."
"'Me,' he said, 'I drive out of the county once in a while, throw a beer can out the window, and come home. That's my vacation....'"
"We are perhaps at last what we are...."
"... my stomach empty, my fists like rocks...."
These poems "do tell the truth, or a chunk of the truth...."
"I think my mother did not speak of love, but she had love, yet calling a spade a spade was what she did...."
"From her silence I learned small injuries are rubies.... Once you know this, you know it for a very long time...."
"She was perhaps dead, and her pacemaker kept her heart pumping...."
Her sister's stopped her mother's pacemaker. "I couldn't do that. There is much I can do but I couldn't do that. I stood away and cried.... Then I held those who had held her...."
"Because of her, I've come to love the living more...."
"Motherhood is pain in regular increments...."
"Shouldn't we be thanking the body, sitting here hour after hour soaking in poetry...."
"... where miles behave themselves in straight lines...."
"I love you, you snow and drought and tornado people.... I have your no-foolin' DNA...."
"It is a good canasta day, deuces wild...."
"The wind a red tray to be remarked upon and remembered...."
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